Dublin Life & Culture.

Making Money in Dublin 1500-2000.

An interesting upcoming symposium, with free admission, looking at a wide variety of aspects of the economic and financial history of the capital.

For centuries Dublin has been the dominant location for making money in Ireland. Locals and new arrivals worked in an array of trades, businesses and professions – earning and spending, investing and losing money. As a capital city, Dublin was also home to lawyers, engineers and administrators attracted by the chance of a government job. Dubliners have lived and worked outside these approved (and taxed) workplaces too. Crime pays, and the pickpocket, fraudster and corrupt official are bound up with urban life. The world of work also involves social and political networks, fraternal organisations and strategic marriages.

Established academics and new researchers will examine the lives of people who made their living in Dublin from the Early Modern period to the late twentieth century. How did locals, rural migrants and immigrants succeed, scrape by or fail in the harsh world of commerce? What was their contribution to the evolution of the city? A wide range of papers will deal with topics including banking, architecture, women in business, printing, the professions and the technology boom of the 1980s.